Top 20+ Free Job Posting Sites For Employers

The best list of free job posting sites to post a job

20+ Free Job Posting Sites

Free job boards allow employers to post jobs for free to create a win-win environment. Often times the job board is going to make money on up sales, ads and data. The more jobs on their free job board, the better the traffic can be from search engines. Often times there will be limits to duration of the free job postings, but free is free, right? Even if a job posting is free for 7 days, it’s much better than the premium fees you may pay on other sites.

You always get what you pay for, unless you know how to optimize the experience. We’ve seen many employers using the ‘post and pray’ approach all wrong. However, many of our best clients know how to leverage the system, understand job board algorithms and make the most for their recruiting strategy. Here are some of the best times and strategies to making the most of free job posting sites.

How to Post Jobs For Free Online

Building your job description

Often times when employers get ready to post their jobs online, they will do a quick google search for ‘job description templates’ and copy/paste what someone else has pre-written. Not a bad strategy, but certainly not good. Many of the job boards have a feature built into their job posting search results to de-dupe. This looks for similar postings that may be considered duplicate job postings. If your template was easy to find, you copied it over and only changed the name of the company, location and compensation, chances are you’ll have a hard time getting found. Much of recruitment marketing is understanding out job boards work.

To build the best job description, we recommend having four major components

Company Overview – this section is talking about who the company is, why they do what they do. Give the candidate the real understanding of what your company’s sandbox really looks like.

Expectations – Paint a very clear picture of what a day and a life of work will look like. By connecting with a candidate to give them a sense of what their day will consist of, emotionally connects and gets them more engaged in the opportunity. In this section, more is always better than less.

Roles and Responsibilities – There is a direct correlation between bullet points in job descriptions and how well they rank on job boards. The biggest job boards have an algorithm that looks for bullet points. Make sure you create lists and utilize six or more.

Compensation – Most companies really overlook compensation. This is a place to shine. It’s not about just the salary or the hourly rate for the employee, it’s more than that. Millennials have demonstrated time and again they care more about culture than compensation. So give them more than “DOE” or “Will discuss upon interview.” Tell a story about what you as a company are committed to compensate them with. Leadership training, industry knowledge, licensing, free lunch, incentive bonuses…etc. The list goes one. Take the time to talk about more than just dollars.

Knowing top industry job boards to post to

Testing, reporting and analyzing is a key strategy in marketing. Job posting is just another form of marketing. It might not be for sales, but have very big impact on the organization. You should be creating a list of all the major job boards who serve in your industry. There are literally thousands of job boards. Many of the job boards VIVAHR submits to are general job boards. However, finding the right industry specific job board can be a powerful way to showcase your recruitment brand against competition and steal talent from competition. The more niche of an industry you’re in, the more valuable industry job boards become.

Using an applicant tracking system to track job posting candidates

Add tracking URL to every job post. Most of the job boards will allow you to add an external URL where the applicant can apply. Be sure to not just give them the exact URL to your apply link, rather, add a UTM tracking to the posting. VIVAHR has a free job posting tracking tool you can use (no matter which ATS you use, this tool will work). Simply enter in the apply URL, add in the source (name of job board, department and important hiring info. This can track traffic from each industry job board to allow you to report against quality of candidate traffic and conversion rates.

List of Top Free Job Boards in 2019

VIVAHR – Totally biased…but we had to be, right? This free ATS gets you unlimited job posting that organically post to free job boards and bring all the candidates back to one centralized place to track, take notes and collaborate on every candidate. 100% free. No credit card required to setup.

SquareHire – This posting automation gets your jobs to a handful of free career sites for you. And…it’s free! You’ll see a theme that all these recommendations are for free job boards.

Angelist – A favorite place to post jobs for VIVAHR’s customers. It is free. It is easy. It is a tremendous place to tell your company story and capture candidates who believe in what you are doing and want to be part of your team.

LocalWork.com – Growing job board in Phoenix. Has expanded to have national reputation and strong organic results. Posting your job on their platform allows you to embed company culture photos, videos and content to tell your hiring story.

Jobvertise

JobCase – A social network that also has job postings for the blue collar industry

Jora

US.Jobs

FlexJobs

Postjobfree – One of the original free job boards, it has strong authority for organic search. Not a name brand destination for job seekers, but their listing will rank well in the search engines.

Yakaz – Classifieds for jobs. If you don’t like Craigslist, you won’t like this one. If you love Craigslist jobs, you’ll be satisfied here.

Upwork – Traditionally a place to post Gig jobs. With the Gig economy taking shape, this needs to be on your list to recruit temporary contract positions.

Jobr – This is a paid job board, but does allow for a free job posting for 7 days. Might be worth it to get a few free applicants.

JobInventory.com – This is good if you already have an ATS or a jobs feed. Their system will import your jobs regularly.

Wisestep – Similar to Upwork, this is good for gig and temp jobs. Not a place for your FT/PT positions.

Techfetch – Nice job board for the technology industry. Very loyal audience and offers a free tier. If you’re hiring for a lot of technology related positions over an extended period of time, this would be a nice competitor to your spend on Dice.

JobSpider – Employment exchange platform built to be similar to a classifieds section. Not the strongest SEO value, but may be good in smaller less competitive markets.

Career Cast – This is a niche job board network in many of the top industries. Visit their website and find the best industry board to represent what you’re hiring for. Not all the industry job boards are free, but a few of them are. Worth the time.

Indeed – Should have been hire on this list, however, many of our clients are getting frustrated at the increasingly high amount of jobs required to be a pay for play. It is the number one job search engine. Can not be ignored and you need to post your jobs here. Even the paid options is still a bargain.

Jobrapido – Global search engine. Very powerful place to get your jobs visible.

CareerJet -International free job board with a powerful index. Nearly 50M jobs posted in their network at any given time.

Free Job Posting Sites with VIVAHR

Getting your jobs on high quality job sites to get you more applicants couldn’t be easier with tools like, VIVAHR.

Why free job posting sites

Free Job Boards Vs Paid Job Boards

There are a number of reasons why you’d consider jumping in and paying for a job rather than posting and waiting for the free platforms to deliver.

Predictability

You know you’ll be hiring many candidates over a sustained period and you can’t wait. If you’re feeling the difficulty of hiring now, and you know there are more open positions coming up, it might be better to jump in and build a bank of candidates to start working through.

Competition

Based on your industry of geographic location, your unemployment rate might be some tight that there is limited supply of candidates. You need to think of this as an urgency and pay to get the exposure in front of the right audience. If you don’t, your competition will and pick up the best talent in a tight market.

Cost control

Regardless if you’re using a free job board or a paid one, be sure to use an ATS to track the candidates so you can compare the source of each of those candidates as they come in. It will not only help you save time of note taking, collaborating, but give you better predictability of where to spend your money in the future with paid ads. Measure, analyze, predict.

Frequently asked questions about free job boards

Can I post jobs for free on craigslist?

In the past you could post all jobs on Craigslist for free. Over the past few years, they have started charging a fee per posting based on what market you’re posting in. The full list of cities and pricing is located here. Many of these job posting cities have a fee of $7-75/job/category. This can add up quite fast since your job post is pushed down daily based on newer job posts. If I were hiring for a customer service role in Los Angeles, I may want to post this job on a Monday in 2 categories. That would cost $150 for the day ($75 for category 1 & $75 for category 2.) If I’m not happy with my candidates by Wednesday, I may have to post again. Within a couple weeks, I would be spending a couple hundred dollars on this one job post.

Are there free job posting sites without registration?

Many of the most aggressive identity theft scams come from fake job postings. Scammers will falsify a company’s information, job posting and collect candidates information from their resumes and use this info for identity theft. Because of this, many websites will require you to create an account with some level of job posting verification. This verification may be a credit card authorization, corporate email verification or sms verification. Chances are if you are not required to verify your identity to post your jobs, the job board quality is very poor and has a low volume of candidates.

Are there free job portals to search resumes?

There are no free job postings sites that also let you search through a resume database for free. Many sites, including Indeed and Ziprecruiter, will let you search through a global resume database along with a paid plan.

How many job boards include an ATS?

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. Most job boards will include a backend to let you manage your candidates. Although they are limited to the candidates you receive from that job board, it can be a good place to take notes, collaborate and keep track of everything. There are Free ATS options, which will allow you to receive candidates from all the job board you post to. This allows you to centralize your note taking, compare sources based on inbound traffic, skills, hires, as well as create custom scorecards to collaborate with other team members.

How are my jobs found on job boards I didn’t post on?

You may start seeing your job posting show up on random job boards. This is done with web crawlers who may scrape data from competitors and use their job postings to help back fill their own job board. Previous we discussed the power of job boards having a high volume of job postings to boost their SEO marketing with a depth of content. Your postings may be included in that web scrape process.

How to connect my ATS XML feed to post to job boards?

When you are working with a new job board to start posting your jobs, ask them if they’ll accept and XML feed of your jobs. This saves you from entering in the same data multiple times, auto included the apply now URL and makes your life much simpler. XML feed of job postings is a formatted feed that is categorized and labeled in an industry accepted format to allow data to transfer automatically between multiple sites.

Are there job posting sites for startups?

There are several job posting sites for startup companies. The most popular and highest rated job board for startups is Angelist.com. This platform is fantastic for growing companies to get exposure in front of a tech savvy audience who may value being a central figure in a startup over a big salary at a larger more established organization.

Why would my job get blocked on a free job board?

Keep track of all your job postings and when you start seeing candidates applying to your open positions. If you do not see candidates within the first 3-5 days after posting your job, there are four major reasons a free job posting site would block your job from being visible. If you feel like any of these issues are keeping your posting from being visible, you should reach out to the job posting website:

Quality – Most job boards have a standard of quality for each job posting. If there is suspicion your job posting is fake, not providing accurate information to their job seeker audience, your job will not be approved.

Duplicate – Job posting websites are very protective of their search results quality. You’ll get your job posting blocked if it is too similar to previously posted jobs. Ensure your job posting is accurate and authentic to your organization.

Temporary, Contract or Third Party – Many job boards will only allow job postings from the actual company who is looking to employ the applicant. Third party recruiters may have trouble getting free job postings. If your job is for a temporary opportunity, you may also have trouble getting approval.

Commission Only – There are many job posting website who will not allow commission only jobs. They are looking for W2 salary jobs only. Be sure to read through the job posting guidelines if your job is failing to load in search results for their job board.

How do I find reviews for the free job boards?

There are several software review websites, however, our favorite and highest quality review websites are software advice, G2crowd and Capterra. They use a user-generated approach to collect reviews and request client verification to validate the review is honest and accurate. On a side note, these websites offer a $10 Amazon or Starbucks compensation for reviews of software you use. If you are an active user of any software, you may qualify for the gift card promotion for 15 minutes of your time reviewing software you’re already using.

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